


Rotten

by kla1991



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Gen, Season 2, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 02:12:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5767327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kla1991/pseuds/kla1991
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One hundred years in bronze is bound to have side effects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rotten

            McPherson stank of the chemicals from the bronzer. His touch was familiar and jovial, and there was a roughness at the edges of his voice. The regents had left her in the Bronze Sector with no intention of releasing her, he explained. No one had even known she was there, and it was really still a rotten world.

            And then he had left her behind in a London hotel room, with instructions to bring him the imperceptor vest and return to Warehouse 13. The handle of the duffel bag he gave her, filled with modern clothes he’d selected himself, cut into her fingers. A young girl had been paid handsomely to explain the basics of the bathroom to her without asking questions about why that was necessary. By the time the girl left, Helena was able to turn on a lamp in the bedroom and navigate the bathroom by that light without suffering.

            Her clothes crackled when she peeled them away from her skin. The stitching had sunk into her like teeth, leaving a crosshatch of lines along her arms; the imprint of her corset was bruised. At the small of her back, her stomach, her wrists, the tugging of cloth away from flesh had resulted in a trickle of blood. Her stockings would not come off until she’d soaked them under running water. When she did remove them, a sock of skin came with them, ragged edges curling back around her ankle.

            She turned on the shower, like the girl had shown her, and stepped under the water flow. From her wounds, skin pulled back and tore away. Dead layers bunched like fabric in the wake of her hand down her arm.

            This explained the itching.

            It was like scaling a fish, gentle strokes and careful cleaning to leave nothing behind. The bathtub stopped draining, and the water pooled around her raw ankles and grew cloudy with layers of her.

            This was all there was of 1901, of the years before. This was the end of those parts of her that had touched that world. The new one had not yet felt her presence.

            It would. So little had changed, much as the sounds and smells were new to her. Pain hammered at her rib cage, and the trident tugged at the edges of her mind. Death was waiting, perhaps not much longer now, but what was time to death? She shut the water off and stared a moment at what death had already taken of her: yards of skin thinner than paper, dashed with blood like ink from an ill-behaved pen.

            Living was still a bloody rotten business.


End file.
